August 9, 2017

The news media on the "Firing Line": 1971

Warning: political content ahead. (For Ray G.)

I hope you have time to watch this at some point, because it touches on things we see debated quite a bit in the pages of these TV Guides, most recently with Chet Huntley just over a week ago. It's William F. Buckley Jr.'s Firing Line from 1971: the title is "The News Twisters," the topic is media bias in presentation of the news, and the guests are TV Guide's Edith Efron and CBS's Andrew Rooney. The positions offered are fairly predictable - as one commentator offers, "the more things change, the more they stay the same" - but no less interesting for all that. No matter how you feel about the issue, you should find this discussion enjoyable; it's one thing to read about this in context, but it's always fun to see it play out in real time, as it were, especially with two of the people we read (and read about) so much.